代币霸权：炒作和 NFT 市场崩溃的一年

在本书的 12 章中，Small 引导读者了解 NFT 炒作的过山车，及其与加密货币的繁荣与萧条以及监管问题的关联。

Art and finance have a salacious appeal, a fact noted by writers from Danielle Steele to Steve Martin, the latter stating wryly toward the end of his novel, An Object of Beauty: “Art was still art whether it was tied to money or not.” Yet Rembrandt died in penury, as New York Times reporter Zachary Small recounts in the introduction to Token Supremacy, their newly published book on the 2021 NFT market bubble and its aftermath.

艺术和金融具有淫荡的吸引力，丹妮尔·斯蒂尔（Danielle Steele）和史蒂夫·马丁（Steve Martin）等作家都注意到了这一事实，后者在他的小说《美丽的对象》的结尾讽刺地说道：“无论是否与金钱挂钩，艺术仍然是艺术。 ”然而，《纽约时报》记者扎卡里·斯莫尔 (Zachary Small) 在他们新出版的关于 2021 年 NFT 市场泡沫及其后果的新书《Token Supremacy》的介绍中回忆道，伦勃朗死于贫困。

Small notes this while describing the infamous 17th-century Dutch tulipomania, an apt comparison to the NFT boom, and one that artist Anna Ridler, represented by Nagel Draxler, first made in her video series Mosaic Virus (2018 and 2019), though neither she nor her work are mentioned in Small’s book. Several artists making work about or with blockchain in the technology’s early years addressed its potential and the problems with its underlying financial model: Simon de la Rouviere, Simon Denny, Sarah Friend, Rhea Myers, Martin Nadal, César Andaluz, and Martin Lukas Ostachowski, to name a few. Small’s book recounts the two years of media-driven interest and inflation, but omits this backstory and wider scope, limiting readers’ understanding of what that moment was truly about, and thus, where it might be going.

Small 在描述臭名昭著的 17 世纪荷兰郁金香狂热时注意到了这一点，这与 NFT 热潮进行了恰当的比较，以 Nagel Draxler 为代表的艺术家 Anna Ridler 首次在她的视频系列《马赛克病毒》（2018 年和 2019 年）中制作了郁金香狂热，尽管她两者都没有斯莫尔的书中也没有提到她的作品。几位在该技术早期就区块链进行创作的艺术家探讨了其潜力及其潜在财务模型的问题：Simon de la Rouviere、Simon Denny、Sarah Friend、Rhea Myers、Martin Nadal、César Andaluz 和 Martin Lukas Ostachowski，仅举几例。斯莫尔的书讲述了两年来媒体驱动的兴趣和通货膨胀，但忽略了这个背景故事和更广泛的范围，限制了读者对那一刻真正的意义的理解，从而限制了它可能走向何方。

Across the book’s 12 chapters, Small guides readers through the roller coaster of NFT hype, and its associations with the boom-and-bust and regulatory concerns of cryptocurrencies. Tyler Hobbs, Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple), Justin Aversano, and Erick Calderon, the founder of generative art platform Art Blocks, are Small’s protagonists of the 2021 boom, taking readers from Christie’s record-breaking auction of Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days to the unexpected synchrony, a year and half later, between Art Blocks’ Open House in Marfa, Texas and Sam Bankman-Fried’s resignation from FTX, the now-bankrupt crypto exchange and hedge fund.

在本书的 12 章中，Small 引导读者了解 NFT 炒作的过山车，及其与加密货币的繁荣与萧条以及监管问题的关联。泰勒·霍布斯 (Tyler Hobbs)、迈克·温克尔曼 (Mike Winkelmann，又名 Beeple)、贾斯汀·阿维萨诺 (Justin Aversano) 和生成艺术平台 Art Blocks 的创始人埃里克·卡尔德隆 (Erick Calderon) 是《Small》2021 年繁荣的主角，他们带领读者观看佳士得破纪录的《Beeple’s Everydays: The First 5,000 Days》拍卖会。一年半后，Art Blocks 在德克萨斯州马尔法举行的开放日与 Sam Bankman-Fried 从现已破产的加密货币交易所和对冲基金 FTX 辞职之间出现了意想不到的同步。

Small’s telling contains engaging anecdotes and the occasional digression to art historical antecedents—the evolution of photography and Donald Judd settling in Marfa—that provide obvious cultural references to anchor readers in this emergent technology. But for someone who participated in and was a close observer of the NFT boom, Token Supremacy seems mostly to reiterate popular magazine articles without providing significant new research or insights. This deficiency is underscored by Small’s goal, outlined in the introduction, to contribute to the history of cultural economics and the dynamics of speculation. There is much to say about the gnarly web that links artists, platforms, hedge funds, venture capitalism, regulation, and global finance, but it is not to be found in the four case studies and breezily recounted recent history that form this book. The shortfall between the book’s stated aims and its execution led me to wonder if Token Supremacy had not tried to fulfill the demands of two audiences: to present the art world’s particular usury in its dealings with crypto for those with some knowledge of both art and crypto and, at the same time, provide a Vanity Fair-esque retelling of NFTs that could credibly be a beach read.

斯莫尔的讲述包含引人入胜的轶事，偶尔还涉及艺术史的前身——摄影的演变和唐纳德·贾德在马尔法的定居——这为读者在这一新兴技术中的锚定提供了明显的文化参考。但对于参与并密切观察 NFT 热潮的人来说，Token Supremacy 似乎主要是在重申流行杂志文章，而没有提供重要的新研究或见解。斯莫尔在引言中概述的目标强调了这一缺陷，即为文化经济学的历史和投机的动态做出贡献。关于连接艺术家、平台、对冲基金、风险资本主义、监管和全球金融的粗糙网络，有很多话可说，但在本书的四个案例研究和轻松叙述的近期历史中却找不到它。这本书的既定目标与其执行之间的差距让我怀疑《Token Supremacy》是否没有试图满足两个读者的需求：向那些对艺术和加密货币都有一定了解的人展示艺术界在处理加密货币方面的特殊高利贷。与此同时，对 NFT 进行了《名利场》式的重述，可以可信地成为海滩读物。

The demands of the latter lead Small to truncate important events, eliding their deeper complexities. For example, in the book’s first chapter, while Small recounts the desires of and the difficulties faced by the Christie’s employees driving the Beeple auction in March, they bypass telling how, several months earlier, Metapurse, the crypto-focused venture capital fund, sold fractionalized ownership stakes in 20 Beeple works as part of its B20 coin investment scheme. It isn’t mere trivia that Metapurse was then the buyer of Everydays for nearly $70 million, but material to why they had a vested interest in driving up Beeple’s prices. And while Everydays served as a kind of advertisement for B20, those works were not added to the coin investment scheme, as initially reported by Amy Castor. The B20 coin and Everydays would be an ideal case study in speculative tokenomics, and might have been used to explain how insider knowledge and “rug pulls” (where a group draws investors, only to abandon the project) operate within NFTs and crypto markets. Small, however, does not illuminate this connection or its implications.

后者的要求导致斯莫尔截断了重要事件，忽略了它们更深层次的复杂性。例如，在本书的第一章中，虽然斯莫尔讲述了 3 月份推动 Beeple 拍卖的佳士得员工的愿望和面临的困难，但他们忽略了几个月前专注于加密货币的风险投资基金 Metapurse 是如何出售的。 20 Beeple 的分散所有权股份是其 B20 代币投资计划的一部分。 Metapurse 当时以近 7000 万美元的价格收购了 Everydays，这不仅仅是一件小事，而且是他们在推高 Beeple 价格方面获得既得利益的重要原因。正如 Amy Castor 最初报道的那样，虽然 Everydays 是 B20 的一种广告，但这些作品并未添加到代币投资计划中。 B20 币和 Everydays 将成为投机代币经济学的理想案例研究，并可能被用来解释内部知识和“拉动”（一个团体吸引投资者，但最终放弃该项目）如何在 NFT 和加密市场中运作。然而，斯莫尔并没有阐明这种联系或其含义。

Further, there is no discussion of the dangers or negative impact that centralized marketplaces like MakersPlace or OpenSea had, nor the model they are based on: the decentralized platform Rare Pepe Wallet, established in 2017, which evolved from the Pepe the Frog, the cult internet meme that went from slacker icon to far right co-optation and, eventually, subsequent reclamation, partly via two Asian projects.

此外，没有讨论像 MakersPlace 或 OpenSea 这样的中心化市场的危险或负面影响，也没有讨论它们所基于的模型：2017 年成立的去中心化平台 Rare Pepe Wallet，它是从邪教 Pepe the Frog 演变而来的。互联网模因从懒鬼图标到极右翼的拉拢，并最终部分通过两个亚洲项目进行了重新开发。

Another important financial feature deserving of greater analysis is resale royalties—Hobbs took in $9 million after an initial $400,0

另一个值得进一步分析的重要财务特征是转售特许权使用费——霍布斯在最初的 400,000 美元之后获得了 900 万美元。